


Take No Prisoners

by hitlikehammers



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: (The Secretive Death-Dodging Bastard), Canon Divergence - Captain America: Civil War (Movie), M/M, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Reunions, The Raft Prison (Marvel), phil to the rescue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-17
Updated: 2016-12-17
Packaged: 2018-09-09 08:04:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8883163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hitlikehammers/pseuds/hitlikehammers
Summary: They’d moved him from the primary holding cells, some half-cocked argument about wanting to learn what they could about the influence of “infinity-tech”—morons, like it’s some bullshit Stark cooked up in his workshop, like it can be controlled—on the human body, given his experience with Loki and Hydra’s subsequent co-opting of the pointy staff.


  Clint’s pretty sure that’s bullshit, though. Because he has a spectacular bullshit-o-meter, fuck you kindly.

-
Captain America frees his compatriots from The Raft. Save one compatriot, who gets his own special rescue from beyond the grave.
 (Winter Gift-Fic Extravaganza, 6/25)





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [yumimum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/yumimum/gifts).



> For [keepcalm-callcoulson](http://keepcalm-callcoulson.tumblr.com/), for the sixth of my of the 25 Days/Fics of my Winter Gift Fic Extravaganza and the prompt: _some Clint Barton/Coulson hurt/comfort? I'm a sucker for reunion fics_ —this doesn't fit ALL your desires, but hopefully will fulfil a few!

They’d moved him from the primary holding cells, some half-cocked arugment about wanting to learn what they could about the influence of “infinity-tech”—morons, like it’s some bullshit Stark cooked up in his workshop, like it can be _controlled_ —on the human body, given his experience with Loki and Hydra’s subsequent co-opting of the pointy staff.

Clint’s pretty sure that’s bullshit, though. A, because he has a spectacular bullshit-o-meter, fuck you kindly, and B, because he knows exactly why they moved him, why they left everyone else, the “bigger fish” by nearly every measure—save maybe Wilson, but Clint’s not stupid, wings trump bow for most people, because most people are kinda lame—but he knows why they left everyone else, and took _him_ away.

Because Clint knows how to survive in ways even these tricky bastards don’t—he could talk Wanda down, had developed enough of a rapport with the woman to get his voice through the way they tormented her, to coach her how to dull the pain as best a mind could manage, even when the pain was _in_ your mind; he talked bullshit at Wilson, who was Air Force and still a little pole-up-his-ass with it but this was different, this was the other side of the aisle and so Clint knew to offer distraction where he could, to savor a laugh when the fuckers holding them hostage played their worst games; and Lang, fuck, Lang just wanted to see his kid, so Clint asked him about her, because Clint knew it was useless to try and make that ache go away, so the best thing to do was rub your own salt in it, because at least that you could control.

And they were there for a reason, after all. Maniacs; criminals. Short-circuiting the system of suppression was frowned upon, he figured; blinking back at the panopticon was bad form or some shit like that.

And seeing as Clint was a bucket of bad-fucking-form, off he went to his own slice of floating criminal-maniac hell. Fuck _all_.

Clint hears commotion, or else thinks he does: more, he hears noise above the constant whir of the facility, the subtle hum of the ocean all around them, the constant weight of artificial pressure control, the dry cut of recycled air—he hears something else, which is enough of a change in the status quo to be of note.

It doesn’t last long, which is a bitch, because Clint rather enjoyed the change of pace. Whatever caused it.

Instead, he leans back and waits for breakfast: which never has fucking coffee, and that’s borderline cruel-and-unusual, he’s sure of that shit, but those sorts of parameters probably don’t apply to underwater cages. He feels like the Little fucking Mermaid, caught in the shriveled waif garden in the Sea Witch’s lair.

Only, manlier. Hotter. Totally all about the subliminal dick imagery. Like, Mr. Sea King but totally happy to swing with the fancy trident and the cave, so to speak. Each with its own happy enjoyments. 

Clint sighs. He’d like some of those happy enjoyments right about now. He’d also like some caffeine. 

Fuck _all_.

Horny and going through warm-bean-stimulant withdrawal. _Not_ a good look, he's sure of it. No one would even _want_ to give him happy enjoyments, like this. And that shit’s unacceptable, because everyone loves him. Clint’s a fucking catch.

Maybe not the _best_ choice of words after the mermaid imagery, but fuck it. It’s his imprisoned inner monologue, goddamnit, he’ll do what he wants.

“Not an inner monologue if you’re muttering it out loud.”

Clint snorts, leaning his head against the wall and smirking without turning toward the noise that’s not noise, not anything new to his world, not _commotion_ , just the voice in his head all the fucking time, even before.

But _always_ since.

“Not out loud when you’re in my head, asshole,” Clint thinks, mutters, whatever. Doesn’t matter. Phil’s not there, and Phil doesn’t hear him, so it doesn’t fucking _matter_.

Where’s his goddamn breakfast?

“Here,” the voice says, and Clint picks up the scrape of a tray through the slot in his door—typical toast and shitty eggs, and a glass of water…

No.

No, that’s. That scent, that… that…

A mug. A real fucking ceramic mug with what Clint can already tell is fucking swill but—

“It _is_ fucking swill, but you’re underwater, so. Beggars and all that.”

Clint vaguely registers that Phil’s voice in his head sounds muffled, that it maybe feels like it comes from behind the steel door just like the tray did, but that’s probably the lack of caffeine, so Clint gulps that shit down, burns his tongue and the roof of his mouth willfully, to nip that shit in the bud quick as he can.

He’s just fine in solitary, seriously. But if he starts with the mourning, the wanting, the wishing for the impossible, he’ll eat himself alive.

The coffee is gone too fast, though. That fucking sucks.

There’s another scrape across the concrete floor, and lo and behold: there’s another coffee pushed through his food-slot.

“Like one was going to be enough,” the voice says, and it’s behind the door, it’s behind the fucking door.

“Where are we, Fitz?”

Clint drinks slower, wills the coffee into his veins so he can feel human again because Phil’s voice behind the door in his head is all fucked up, isn’t making any sense, and what’s a Fitz, Jesus. Coffee, save him. Please, oh please, he’s been devout for so long. Grant him mercy, here and now. 

There’s a click that’s unfamiliar—a commotion of a sort that sends Clint’s heart racing for reasons he can’t understand; maybe the coffee, probably the coffee, this is _not_ a fucking _mercy_ , Coffee; _Jesus_ —and his ribs hurt when the voice-behind-the-door-in-this-head says, “Perfect, we’re in.”

And then the door creaks open.

And Clint apparently actually sucks at being in solitary, because he’s clearly lost his fucking mind.

“I understand this is probably a shock,” says a ghost, a fucking _ghost_ “So, the coffee.” The ghost nods down at the empty mug, and the one now shaking in Clint’s hands. “Thought it might calm your nerves.”

The ghost frowns, like he’s clearly seeing that it didn’t fucking _work_ , plus he’s a ghost so what does he care, and he didn’t do anything because ghosts can’t _do_ real things and fuck all, fuck _all_.

“Speechless,” the voice-that’s-in-the-room-and-clear-in-Clint’s head says, though the tone shifts, hesitant. “So a guy’s got to die to shut you up, Barton?”

Clint doesn’t notice that the coffee slips from his grasp, that it stains his clothes until the mug shatters at his feet. Clint doesn’t notice much of anything, until hands are on his hands, on his arms, his face, and the hands are familiar, and they belong to the ghost. They lead to arms that attach to the ghost.

Clint can’t fucking _breathe_.

“Clint,” the voice-in-his-head-but-in-front-of-him-warm says, in the same tone that haunts, that gilts Clint’s dreams: soft and sated and full of everything in the world in warm beds after breathless moments, limbs sweaty, entangled, perfect.

Fingers that Clint knows better than his own skin, his own pounding pulse are turning his chin, are pressed to his neck. “Clint, look at me.”

“Jesus,” the ghost has a hot touch, and it measures the pump of Clint’s blood and it’s actually really fucking fast, really fucking _hard_. “Breathe, Clint.”

It’s only then that Clint realises he wasn’t, and that voice is a clarion call that he cannot refuse, a siren song and he breathes, but he wheezes, chokes and god, he’s lost it, god, the world is _ending_ , isn’t it, _fuck_ —

“Simmons, get the medbay ready, we—”

Clint loses all control, all ability to resist the lure of the impossible, and he leans: if he cannot breathe, if his heart's gonna give, he’s gonna taste even a lie, even a last-ditch grasp at want of his dying mind, he’s gonna feel those lips against him one last time, and goddamnit.

And god _damnit_ they give, they take just as they always did; they’re as sweet as they ever were.

And the breath between them is warm, harsh, heavy; the chest pressed against his lifts and falls too real, too out of sync and trembling in its own right for Clint to have imagined it, because Phil was always the stoic, the bedrock.

This is something new. Which means, which means.

“You son of a _bitch_.”

Phil puts him at arm's length, but doesn’t let go.

“A little,” Phil admits. Clint glares, but his heart’s still pounding, different now, but still almost nauseating, still painful as fuck but Clint knows pain. Knows it better than most.

And if this is a dream, a vision, a hallucination and the harbinger of worse, Clint will take the salt in his own hand and grind it in, hard.

“A lot, okay,” Phil concedes, after a moment. “But we’re on a timeframe, and we need to move.”

Clint stumbles when Phil pulls, but he stops. He’s not alone here, he—

“Rogers sprung everyone else,” Phil reads his mind, and maybe that’s the proof he needs, the only proof that would ever get through; that Phil _knows_ him, the only one who ever did. “Couldn’t find you, though.”

Clint snorts, half-hearted but _something_. “So you outsmarted the good Captain?”

“Call it outmaneuvered,” Phil quips, leading them into the halls and drawing his gun; “because I’m respectful of my elders.”

Clint follows, tries to gather his wits to note any danger, to see any threat but all he can see is Phil, moving. Breathing. Being.

“Is that a subtle hint?”

“Not at all subtle,” Phil shoots back, and he turns just a little before Clint grabs him, his limbs his own again, all his energy in the way he pushes Phil hard against the wall for just a moment, just long enough to kiss him one more time, to try to convince himself of what’s real in the world, what’s true.

“Fucking son of a _bitch_ ,” Clint gasps a little between their mouths before he pulls off, and they both take off for whatever, whomever’s waiting.

And on the way, Clint sends a little prayer of penitence into the ether, because he should never have doubted the gift of mercy.

Coffee’s _always_ had his back.

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr](http://hitlikehammers.tumblr.com).


End file.
